London: Israel’s fight started at birth. The 1948 War of Independence lasted some 20 months and was the culmination of 30 years of friction between Jews and Arabs during the period of British rule of Palestine.
Formed on the land of historic Palestine, Israel seems to have been at war ever since it was created in 1948. The current conflict in Gaza and Lebanon, sparked by Hamas’ 7 October massacre last year which killed 1200 mostly innocent Israeli civilians and saw 250 people dragged as hostages into Gaza, is just the latest in a long series of Israel’s wars with its neighbours. As you read this, Israel appears determined to take on all its enemies—Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and Syria—at once. The Netanyahu government seems to be in no mood to hold back.
Israel’s fight started at birth. The 1948 War of Independence lasted some 20 months and was the culmination of 30 years of friction between Jews and Arabs during the period of British rule of Palestine. Eight years later, Israel invaded Egypt, along with Britain and France, after President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. Israel captured Sinai, but returned it in exchange for UN peacekeepers along the Egypt-Israel border. Then, feeling that it was surrounded by Arab states dedicated to its eradication, Israel carried out a successful surprise attack against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967. Known as the “Six-Day War”, the outcome was the redrawing of the region’s landscape, with Israel gaining territory four times its original size.
Israel’s success, however, did nothing more than set the stage for future conflict. Between 1967 and 1970 there was a war of attrition between Egypt and Israel with Nasser attempting to regain the Sinai Peninsula through political and military means. The conflict ended with a ceasefire, but didn’t resolve the underlying territorial issue. Six years later, Arab forces launched a surprise attack on Israel during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, aiming to recapture territories lost in 1967. Both sides suffered heavy casualties during the 19-day campaign before a UN brokered ceasefire on 25 October 1973. The “Yom Kippur” war led to the Camp David Accords five years later, when Egypt recognised Israel, the first Arab state to do so.
In 1982, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) invaded southern Lebanon to eliminate the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, led by Yasser Arafat, which had been launching attacks on Israel. The IDF eventually reached Beirut, ousting the PLO and Arafat, and occupying southern Lebanon until 2000. It was during this period that a new organisation, Hezbollah, was created with the support of several thousand instructors from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. When their fighters began to fire rockets into Israel in July 2006, the IDF launched another ground invasion of southern Lebanon imposing an air and naval blockade. The conflict lasted 34 days, with both sides claiming victory after the UN-brokered ceasefire went into effect on 8 September. Because of the unprecedented military support Hezbollah received from Iran, many consider this second Lebanese War to be the first round of the Iran-Israel proxy conflict.
As if all these wars weren’t enough, during its 76 years of existence Israel has also had to cope with 2 “Intifadas”, or Palestinian uprisings against Israeli control, which involved numerous attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces. The first Intifada lasted 6 years, between 1987 and 1993, in which the IDF killed an estimated 1,087 Palestinians, of which 240 were children. Among Israelis, 100 civilians and 60 soldiers were killed. The Second Intifada, also known as the al-Aqsa Intifada, was another major uprising of the Palestinians against Israeli occupation. Triggered by the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit and also the highly provocative visit by the future Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon to the Temple Mount, the violence lasted more than four years. It was eventually supressed by more than a million rubber bullets, live ammunition and tear gas by the IDF.
It was during the Second Intifada that the Israeli government decided to build barriers around the two regions of Greater Israel occupied by Palestinians, with the primary purpose of controlling their entry into Israel and therefore reducing the threat of terrorism. The barrier around the West Bank, where about 3 million Palestinians currently live, is a combination of fences, concrete walls, and watchtowers. The route and construction of the barrier have been contentious issues as it has severely impacted Palestinian communities by restricting movement, separating families and dividing agricultural lands. Palestinians describe the barrier as the “Wall of Apartheid”.
A barrier around the Gaza Strip had existed since 1996, but a second was built alongside, complete with sensors, barbed wire and remote-controlled machine guns. This new 7m high fence also featured an underground concrete barrier, designed to prevent the construction of tunnels from Gaza into Israel. The 2.3 million Palestinians, who lived in Gaza, called it “the largest open-air prison in the world”, as they could only enter Israel proper through a single crossing point which was under strict IDF control.
After the second Intifada, the Israeli government decided on a “Gaza disengagement plan”, in which 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza were unilaterally dismantled in 2005, with some 8,000 Jewish settlers relocated throughout Israel. The improved fence around Gaza was considered by the Israeli security forces to be impenetrable. That was until 7 October 2023.
The massacre of so many innocent Israeli citizens by Hamas on that fateful day a year ago so traumatised the nation that for most Israelis the thought of co-existing with the Palestinians is out of the question. At the same time, decades of occupation and the butchery by Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank have traumatised the Palestinians to feel anything other than hatred and revenge against Israelis. With such polarisation, is peace in Israel ever possible?
In one of the most complex and longstanding conflicts in modern history, it’s clear that harmony can only be achieved if those deep-rooted historical, political and social issues which have caused decades of tension and wars, are resolved. Put simply, it’s all about the long-term aspirations of two groups of people, Israelis and Palestinians, to occupy the same piece of land. History shows that they can’t live together, so the only solution is to divide the land into two parts, allowing Palestinians and Israeli’s to live peacefully side by side in their own states – the Two-State Solution. The problem is that there are many diehards on both sides who insist that the entire land belongs exclusively to them and they will fight to the death to grab it. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his two powerful side-kicks, ultra-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, fall into this category. All three are adamant that the Two-State Solution will never materialise.
There was a glimmer of hope thirty years ago when the Oslo Accords were signed, designed to bring about Palestinian self-determination in the form of a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel. But the Accords were wrecked by resolute far-right Israelis led by Benjamin Netanyahu. To make the point, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s fifth prime minister, was assassinated in 1995 by a right-wing Israeli extremist simply for signing the Accords.
There is deep frustration among moderate Arab and many Muslim leaders over the hard-line stance of Israel’s right-wing leadership against a settlement on Palestine. Speaking at a recent press conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi insisted that Arab and Muslim countries would guarantee Israel’s security if the Knesset agrees to allow the establishment of Palestine on the pre-1967 lines. Criticising Netanyahu’s inflammatory speech to UNGA, in which he claimed that “Israel is surrounded by those who want to destroy it”, Safadi asserted that “members of the Muslim-Arab committee, mandated by 57 Arab and Muslim countries, are here to guarantee the security of Israel in the context of Israel ending the occupation and allowing for the emergence of a Palestinian state. All of us in the Arab world here, want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security”, he said.
Identifying Israel’s prime minister as the chief obstacle to any progress, Safadi claimed that “the amount of damage that the Israeli government has done – 30 years of effort to convince people that peace is possible—Netanyahu’s government has killed it. The amount of dehumanisation, hatred and bitterness, created by Israel will take generations to navigate through”.
Safadi then posed the question: “If Netanyahu doesn’t want the Two-State Solution, can you ask Israeli officials what is their endgame—other than just wars and wars and wars?” Good point, as what all moderate Israelis want is peace and peace and peace. Unfortunately for them, this can never happen with hard-line Netanyahu and his extremist ministers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in control. Their vision for Israel is almost Biblical—one of permanent struggle.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.